History of the Game
NOTE: This game seems to be no longer under active development. The author of the game, John Halter, has failed to provide continued updates on the development of the game and to forfill his obligations to the Kickstarter backers. The information below is provided for historic reasons. Here's all the information you might want to know about the history of Bacillus and how it was developed. College Years and Evolve In John's sophomore year in college (around Jan 2009), he taught himself how to program computers because he wanted to model biological processes on computers. When learning this skill, he decided to start working on a science based video game, because no game he knew of accurately represents biology or evolution. This initial attempt at making a game was titled Evolve. Evolve had a larger scope than Bacillus, attempting to encompass all of evolution, but John figuired out fast it was unrealistic as a game. Until Graduation, John worked on the game on his spare time. This work was mainly around experimentation with what works and doesn't work as a biology video game. Most of these prototypes were had ASCII graphics. Their style's also ranged drastically from SimEarth 'remakes', to RTS inspired, as a Role Playing game. They were all different attempts to see what fits best as a evolution game. Later on the game's focus was also shifted towards the prokaryotic kingdom, and the thoughts were to create different game emphasizing different diversities. These early prototypes also featured a wide variety of integrated scientific principles into the game. Some styles of games emphasized heavily on micro-managing macro-molecules, requiring the player to manage metabolism of every amino acid, every nucleotide, and various other complications. Others feature large scale science, allowing the player to manipulate the planet to manipulate the life. This science based game was surprisingly developed with a lot of experimentation. Post-College After graduation (May 2011), John went searching for a job, so he worked on the game rarely. At this time, his friend Omar showed him Instinct, a C++ graphics package. So most of the work was converting the game into 2D sprite based graphics, and improving visuals overall. Multiplayer was also added in using the RakNet library, but successive updates of the game would break the multiplayer. The earliest implementation of the genetic allogarithms were inputed into the game in this period. Bacillus was now becoming a complete game. During this period, the name of the game was changed to Bacillus. It was done to reflect the fact that the game was more focused on bacteria and to honor the bacteria John researched in College. Omar Joins By November 2011, John had become frustrated and depressed with the lack of progress in getting a job. This frustration lead him to give himself his own job, and even better it was based in science (Nobody can keep John from science). John decided to take this game he'd been working on for the past couple of years, and turn it into a 'real' video game. He then started a blog MilkyJoeGame.blogspot.com to give a place to show progress on the game. He also made a Twitter accound (@MilkyJoeGames) because he knew twitter was important in the indie video game world. The name MilkyJoeGames was chosen because the name (or avatar or gamertag) John uses when playing video games is Milky Joe - so it made sense to just say Milky Joe games as the "studio" which is making the game. At this point John also knew he wanted to do a kickstarter campaign. He had known about Kickstarter for a while, and he also knew that if he wanted this game to be the 'real thing' he would need some cash. Unfortunately he was poor, so kickstarter seemed like a good idea. John submitted the idea to kickstarter at the end of November, and they approved the game the next day. For the next couple of Months, John started working harder (talking up all his time) on the game, and planning for the kickstarter. Omar 'officially' joined the team, helping out John more with the game. Omar is getting a Computer Science degree at UCSB, so he is more computer literate than John and helped with the programming knowledge John didn't know, and showing programming tools. In this period, the game was switch to the SFML graphics library. The Instinct graphics package had reached it's limit, so converting over to SFML made the game run smoother and faster. On February 8th John deciding to start the kickstarter campaign February 29th. Interestingly enough, that's the same date the Double Fine kickstarter launched. The success worried John, as he didn't know how it would effect his campaign. Kickstarter The Kickstarter campaign started February 29th, and lasted 23 days to March 23rd which what John's 23rd birthday. The kickstarter goal was $1,500, which was reached in 1 week. Funding for the game continued on a semi-linear path until the end, when it was 288% funded. Kickstarter campaigns come with rewards, here are the rewards in the Bacillus campagin : *John will answer a biology question for you *Closed Beta Access to the game *Naming a bacteria *Designing a bacteria *A special T-Shirt *Naming a geological feature *Sponsoring the game In total 304 people backed the game. During the Kickstarter campaing, one of John's friend alerted him that THQ (a game company) had slapped a trademark on the word Evolve. So it was good John changed the name. Post-Kickstarter Post-Kickstarter John continued to vigorously program the game without the restriction of money, making the game faster and smooter. As well as developing the game for Mac and Linux. A trailer of the game was also made with music from Darren Denman. Desura approved the sale of the game on their website April 20th. The first beta release to the kickstarter backers was May 18th.